Writing Poetry to Save Your Life - (Personal Development) by Maria Mazziotti Gillan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

What I hope to accomplish in this book is to give writing prompts that will help you to get past all the outside influences that keep you from believing in yourself and in your ability to write. In order to write, you need to get rid of notions about language, poetic form, and esoteric subject matter ? all the things that the poetry police have told you are essential if you are to write. I wanted to start from a different place, a place controlled by instinct rather than by intelligence. Revision, the shaping and honing of the poem, should come later, and, in revising, care always needs to be taken to retain the vitality and electricity of the poem. Anyone can learn to craft a capable poem, but it is the poems that retain that initial vitality that we remember; these are the poems that teach us how to be human.

From the Back Cover

Writing Poetry to Save Your Life combines Gillan's personal story about her journey as a writer with her suggestions for writers at all stages of development. The voice in this book is the voice of a friend who sits with you in a warm kitchen sipping espresso or a cup of herbal tea, while offering support and encouragement. It is designed to help you find the stories you have to tell and the words to tell them. It is based on the belief that when you find the courage to explore your memories, you will find the source for evocative writing. Writing Poetry to Save Your Life is a book about the writing process rather than about the craft of writing. It can be used in classrooms, by writer's groups, or by an individual while writing at home or in a coffee shop. This book will encourage you to write, and in the process, will give you confidence, help you overcome writer's block, and silence the critical voice of the being Gillan calls ?The Crow.? It will jumpstart your creativity, giving you permission to use the power of words to save your life.

Review Quotes

Gillan's outlined in Writing Poetry to Save Your Life a syllabus for any MFA Program I would want to attend. The book is suggestive without being so ambitious as to produce any kind of anxiety. She doesn't talk about writing in a way that makes it seem as though a writer even has the option of failing. Her confidence in each of her readers is contagious and frankly, quite refreshing. Her book is aimed to help us achieve our best writing, yes, but it's also aimed at helping us become the best version of ourselves.

--Claudia Lundahl

Maria Mazziotti Gillan ... has experimented with a hybrid genre encompassing poetry, textbook, memoir, and meditation. Only a writer with her breadth of experience could have successfully welded these diverse modes into such a satisfying whole.

--John Paul Russo

Praise for All That Lies Between Us: These poems are powerful in their honesty, their passion and their grief. They take us deep into the labyrinth of our humanity and -- in the face of loss and death -- show us the paradox of love in the center of our being.

--Diane di Prima

The Place I Call Home ... contains some of the most honest poems about marriage and family a reader is likely ever to come across. The craft is there, the well chosen word or phrase, but the power of these poems comes also from the truth in them that is moving and rare.

--Marge Piercy

Praise for THE PLACE I CALL HOME: The Place I Call Home by Maria Mazziotti Gillan contains some of the most honest poems about marriage and family a reader is likely ever to come across. The craft is there, the well chosen word or phrase, but the power of these poems comes also from the truth in them that is moving and rare.--Marge Piercy Praise for ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN US: These poems are powerful in their honesty, their passion and their grief. They take us deep into the labyrinth of our humanity and -- in the face of loss and death -- show us the paradox of love in the center of our being.--Diane di Prima

About the Author

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). Her latest book is The Place I Call Home (NY Quarterly Books). Her webpage is www.mariagillan.com. She is the Director of the Creative Writing Program/The Binghamton Center for Writers, and a Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-State University of New York. In addition, she received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities from Binghamton University. Maria is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She has published fifteen books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, Italian Women in Black Dresses, and What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (all by Guernica Editions).